amnesia n. A loss of memory, especially one brought on by some distressing or shocking experience.

It is 2006 and I’m wearing Earth Shoes. I can’t decide whether to turn my ankles left and right and admire my big, square college-reminiscent feet or impale myself on my comb. Buying sensible shoes does that to me. It is a willing surrender of my ideas about the hip, slick and coolness of youth, and it is always humbling.

Don't be so smart that you can't define 'intellectual' Re-examining her definition of what an intellectual is takes the sting out of being labeled one. By Adell Shay

Didn’t he see it? How could he shower and get dressed regularly without tending to the blemishes that infiltrated his back and legs? What did he do before he met me? Seeing it there on him beckoned me; the outside world ceased to exist and his untended blemish became the focal point of my existence. I leaped forward to slay my enemy. Jay caught the look in my eye and his body tightened.

It has been a long time since I've eaten a meal this bad. I inhale it greedily and wonder how long it took me to forget the normalcy of such meals. This one has been a twelve-hour car drive from home, about as far as one can drive without hitting Oregon. The others are thousands of miles away and decades behind me now. Getting older and fleeing the Midwest has its advantages.

I pass the smiling faces for weeks, maybe months, and never see them. Back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, I glide or tip toe or clomp hurriedly in an attempt to get wherever I am running late.  I am always running late, it seems.

Despite knowing that everything is large in Texas, that particular phrase always captured my imagination. I think my psyche is drawn to the optimism I feel every time I hear or speak it.